Red Broken Mountainous Labyrinth
2008
Site-specific installation
Red aluminum venetian blinds, powder-coated steel structure, moving spotlight, dimmable floodlight
Installation view of SIBLINGS AND TWINS at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Curated by Melanie Ohnemus
May 17–June 29, 2008
Photos: Katrin Schilling
Courtesy: Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin
Composed of two distinct parts, Siblings and Twins relates to previous installations that represent abstract portraits of historical figures. This installation
focused on two pairs of characters: Kim San, the underground Korean revolutionary who fought against Japanese occupation between 1905 and 1938,
and his biographer, the American journalist Nym Wales; and the French author Marguerite Duras and her husband and fellow Resistance fighter, Robert
Antelme. Red Broken Mountainous Labyrinth is a portrait of Kim and Wales, who met secretly over the course of a number of years, often in life-threatening
circumstances. The artist created an abstract representation of the unlikely encounter of two people without whom a chapter of history would be lost.
5, Rue Saint-Benoît refers to the address of Duras’s apartment in Paris, which served as hub for various political activities, including meetings of the
Resistance and of French intellectuals opposed to the Stalinist Communist Party during Charles de Gaulle’s term. Duras lived there with Antelme,
whom she nursed back to health after he was rescued from the Dachau concentration camp by François Mitterand and brought back to Paris by
Dionys Mascolo, whom Duras had taken as her lover even before Antelme’s deportation. The work consists of eight sculptures that reference
domestic objects, mostly kitchen appliances and bathroom accoutrements that represent basic human sustenance. The apartment was the site of a
political struggle for survival and of inextricable connections among the three characters. The unconditional devotion of each to the others, in both
their personal and political lives, was subjectively illustrated in this installation.